March Madness Bracketology Conference Watch: March 10th Edition

With Selection Sunday only four (FOUR!) days away, we have witnessed some amazing upsets in several conferences. Dominant Valparaiso was stunned by University of Wisconsin – Green Bay in the Horizon League as the Phoenix marched their way into the NCAA playoffs for the first time in 20 years. Monmouth was upended in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championship by Iona. Front runner Wagner lost their championship game to evenly-matched Farleigh Dickinson. And finally, a crucial game played out in Gonzaga getting off a bursted bubble and into the tournament with a much needed win over Saint Mary’s to win the West Coast Conference.

The question is, however, whether these games caused bubble teams that are scratching at the bottom of the At-Large bids to lose their spots. In this edition, we update our rankings system and take a look at the conferences.

Conferences are broken down as follows: Conference Name (with number of teams expected to make the NCAA Tournament), Tournament Champion (automatic bid into NCAA Tournament), Still Alive (Not eliminated from conference tournament as of this morning), Predicted Winner (of the conference tournament), At-Large (currently sitting as an at-large if they are not in (or predicted to win) the conference tournament), Bubble Team (If they are within the top 15 teams after the at-larges are determined).

We note that an “At-Large” team is a team that is not projected to be a conference winner; is not a conference winner; and is in the Top 36 remaining spots. This is in no way indicative of saying that these teams are safe. The “Bubble” teams are teams that are within the Top 75. Some teams should be eliminated (Sorry UCLA); but some teams have room to creep in (LSU, Ohio State).

1. America East (1)

Tournament Champion: None

Still Alive in Conference: Stony Brook, New Hampshire, Vermont, Hartford

32. Western Athletic (1)

Current State of NCAA Tournament

Using our rankings system, we place the 68 teams into the tournament bracket as follows:

Current Projections of the 2016 NCAA Tournament Seedings as of March 10th.

Conference Rankings (Jacobs’ Model)

Using our rankings system, we are able to rank the conferences based on performance and schedule strength. Next to the ranking results, we have the number of bids we are projecting for each conference, along with the percentage of teams from that conference that are projected to make the tournament.

Conference

Rank Score

Projected Bids

% Conference

Big 12

0.81173

7

70.0000

Pac 12

0.75749

7

58.3333

Atlantic Coast

0.75476

9

60.0000

Big East

0.74984

5

50.0000

Big Ten

0.70788

7

50.0000

Southeastern

0.68690

4

28.5714

American

0.63015

2

18.1818

Atlantic 10

0.62089

2

14.2857

Mountain West

0.54805

1

9.0909

Colonial Athletic

0.53800

1

10.0000

Missouri Valley

0.52031

1

10.0000

Mid-American

0.51690

1

8.3333

West Coast

0.49880

2

20.0000

Summit League

0.49580

1

11.1111

Big West

0.47987

1

11.1111

Horizon League

0.44967

1

10.0000

Sun Belt

0.43751

1

9.0909

Ivy League

0.43203

1

12.5000

Southern

0.43041

1

10.0000

Conference USA

0.41491

1

7.1429

Metro Atlantic Ath.

0.40933

1

9.0909

Ohio Valley

0.38939

1

8.3333

Big South

0.38252

1

9.0909

Atlantic Sun

0.35580

1

12.5000

Western Athletic

0.35033

1

11.1111

America East

0.34787

1

11.1111

Patriot League

0.34354

1

10.0000

Big Sky

0.34204

1

8.3333

Northeast

0.26955

1

10.0000

Southland

0.26516

1

7.6923

Mid-Eastern Ath.

0.23896

1

7.6923

Southwestern Ath.

0.22469

1

10.0000

Current Rankings (Jacobs’ Model)

The overall rankings according to our current model shows the scores for each of the 351 NCAA Division I teams.